The One Screen Short Film Festival: Time to show them what you got

September 26, 2019

The One Club for Creativity has opened its call for entries for the eighth annual One Screen Short Film Festival. It is open to filmmakers from both commercial advertising and film industries and applauds excellence in all forms and aspects of short films — narrative fiction, comedy, passion projects, commercials, branded content, music videos, spec work, animation, sound, movie poster design, title sequences, etc.

The mission of the One Screen Short Film Festival is to celebrate and award filmmakers working in both the film and ad industries with no limitation and total artistic freedom, all on one screen. There was a significant increase in entries last year, with submissions from 45 countries received.

In addition to awarding work in specific genre categories, One Screen has expanded this year to recognise creative excellence by region, with best-of awards for Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America and Middle East-North Africa.

Early submission deadlines to qualify for discounted entry fees are November 29, 2019 (US$150) and December 6, 2019 (US$175). The final deadline is December 13, 2019 ($200).

Entries are judged by a 60-person jury of leading film directors, producers, ad agency creatives and heads of production companies, to be announced shortly. Winners will be unveiled at the eighth annual One Screen Short Film Festival awards ceremony and screening in New York in February 2019.

One Screen is part of The One Club for Creativity. The One Club’s One Show was the first ad industry awards competition to recognise original branded content, creating the separate new category of Branded Entertainment in 2003 to accommodate the original launch of BMW Films. The One Screen Short Film Festival was launched in 2011 to honour creative excellence in film further.

Best of Show at this year’s One Screen Festival went to Finch, Sydney, Australia for Derin Seale’s The Eleven O’Clock.

Other notable winners included:

R/GA New York, which won three awards for Rising on behalf of The Ad Council

BBDO New York with three wins for Bus for AT&T:

Johnson & Johnson and Mars Chocolate North America, Snickers; and Observatory and Shutterstock won two One Screen awards each.

Past One Screen winners also include Oscar-winning director Laurent Witz, as well as Martín Rosete, director of award-winning feature film, Money, whose producer first connected with him at the One Screen awards ceremony in 2014.

“One Screen has grown in stature to the point of attracting Oscar winners from around the world as both entrants and judges,” said Jonathan Jirjis, executive producer at The One Club and head of the One Screen program. “At the same time, we’ve also recognised great work from types and sizes of entrants including ad agencies, small production companies and independent directors. One Screen is now a home for the passion projects of accomplished filmmakers, as well as a proving ground for promising young talent.”